Want long term success for YOUR company, all your valued team members, and all your valued customers? Follow these 7 simple guidelines:
Here’s the tough news for your company: As the global marketplace continues to become more and more competitive, those jobs and enterprises that a machine can do faster or someone else can do cheaper will go the way of the dinosaur and the dodo bird. Here’s the good news for your company: Companies that invest in developing their team members’ creativity will foster cultures of innovation, cultures with the ability to shape shift and morph to take advantages of rapid changes and unforeseen opportunities in the marketplace.
Bob Dylan once said, “he not busy being born is busy dying.” Creative companies such a Google, 3M, and Pixar are consistently in the process of being born, not as the companies they were the day before, but as expressions of the curiosity, imaginations, and contributions of their valued team members intersecting an alive, vibrant, ever-changing marketplace. As reported by Forrester consulting, “Companies that foster creativity are 3.5 more likely to achieve revenue growth of 10% or more than their peers.”
Innovation may be more associated with the tangible development of new, useful, and profitable products and services. But without a company culture that fosters creativity, such potential innovations either go unspoken (for fear of ridicule or negative repercussions), never get developed (for lack of allotted time or resources), or never make it into the marketplace (for fear of failure), all of which thwart a company’s ability to grow and evolve over time. For innovations to come into being, a company needs to first promote creativity, to create policies and rewards for thinking, being, and interacting outside the box.
According to a new hypothesis featured in Scientific American, the reason humans “conquered the planet” was because “our species wielded the ultimate weapon: cooperation.” Those companies that foster creative collaboration, both internally among different teams and departments and externally with other companies, including so-called competitors, will prevail over those who choose to silo different departments within the organization or to isolate themselves from outside influence. Additionally, those companies that learn to co-create with the planet, that is come up with new ways of doing business that help restore the vitality of the biosphere and honor all life, will help usher in a whole new phase of human evolution.
In 2010, in the midst of a tanking world economy, a survey of over 1500 CEO’s across 33 industries and 60 countries concluded, “more than rigor, management discipline, integrity or even vision — successfully navigating an increasingly complex world will require creativity.” Why? Creative leaders are able to inspire, empower, and ensure their employees while simultaneously cozying up to the dynamic, interdependent, uncertain landscape around them and see patterns and opportunities.
Through the nourishment of creative insights, the gratification of bringing those insights into the world, the ecstatic joy of dropping in the experience of creative flow, and the excitement we feel when we are wowed by the creations of others, the creative process quite naturally brings fulfillment and meaning to our lives. According to the Forrester survey, of all the companies ranked highly for fostering creativity, 69% have received awards and recognition for being a “best place to work.”
How can we get billions of workers to their jobs each day without exhausting the world’s fuel supplies? How can livestock be raised in a way that actually leaves the land better off than it was before? How can we educate our children in a way that doesn’t just pack their brains with information but fuels their imaginations and encourages them to bring their own mind-blowing innovations into the world? Across all industries, creative solutions are in high demand. Moreover, those individuals, teams, and organizations that can come up with creative and innovative solutions will be celebrated by others and reap huge financial rewards.
Austin Hill Shaw is a creativity expert who works with individuals who want to unlock their full creative potential and organizations that want to build cultures of innovation. He is the founder of Creativity Matters, author of The Shoreline of Wonder: On Being Creative, and inventor of The Creativity Quiz.
“It is much easier to build a strong relationship in the beginning of a project than it is to salvage a strained one later on.” -Austin Hill Shaw, Founder of 3 Lights Design and Inventor of the Full-Spectrum Client Intake Given all the time, money, and material...
"...it will save your marriage…Whatever project you think you're doing it's like all is not worth it unless you work with somebody who is as passionate and who's soul is into it as 3 Lights." -Thomas K, Professional Photographer and 3 Lights Design Client. How to do a...
"You can't get what you want, 'till you know what you want." -Joe Jackson One of the biggest challenges for you as a home or business owner who is wanting to remodel is figuring out what you actually want. Most clients I meet are clear that they either want to or need...